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Stam only expected one United player to be a manager

Jaap Stam only expected one of his Manchester United teammates to become a manager after their playing career.

Stam was appointed head coach of Championship Reading this summer, with the former centre-half taking his first foray into management.

The Dutchman enjoyed spells as an assistant at FC Zwolle and Ajax in his native Netherlands before taking the post at Reading, replacing Brian McDermott.

Stam returns to England after a three-year spell at United from 1998 to 2001, and the 44-year-old admits he did not expect Roy Keane, Gary Neville or Teddy Sheringham to go into management so soon.

“A lot of people say: ‘You can already see that this player will become a manager’ but I think sometimes that’s a load of crap,” he told The Guardian.

“It’s not always the player that’s talking in the dressing room that becomes a good manager. It’s a feeling that you need to develop, it’s a feeling that needs to grow on you. Of course, when you play football yourself you can think you want to become a manager but it does not make you a good manager.

“I was a player, after that I wanted to do nothing with football for a year and see what I wanted to do.

“Eventually you go for your badges and before you know it, six years down the road, you’re coaching a team and now I’m at Reading.

“It sounds strange, maybe, because I have played with a lot of big players but I never thought: ‘OK, they’re going to go into management.’

“Maybe there was only one, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, because he was always talking about football but I did not have a feeling with the other players.”